Memories became dreams. They fed on my fear and grew powerful and dark, breathing and heaving inside me. I was like a frightened young girl carrying a secret life inside her body. I took a swath of long cloth and tightened it around my swollen belly so that the thing inside would die, asphyxiated. But night after night, memories burst upon the scenes in my dreams. The dreams shifted inside me each night, a full moon waning and a crescent expanding back to a full circle.

One night, they became so full and living inside me, they broke loose uncontrollably, as the water breaks in the uterus ready to give birth. I let it go and memories gushed out, to my surprise, as songs and poetry, unleashing little truths hidden so far from me. The pear that I once took foran apple. I am glad mother didn't try to explain then what I saw was an